And then last night, as we were both reading our his-and-hers copies ofThe New Yorkerin bed, she turned over and gently took mine out of my hands.
At first, I thought she wanted to make love, and I felt a sense of dread wash over me, and then a sense of despair that this is how I felt about the possibility of touching my beautiful, sexy future wife.
“Honey, I’m tired—” I began.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “Rebecca is moving out of my apartment.”
Rebecca is the tenant subleasing Sarah’s old place until the lease is up.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Why?”
“She’s tired of being alone in the city and she’s going to move out to her sister’s farmhouse in Wisconsin. Help with her kids.”
“Ah, wow. That sounds nice.”
It dawned on me that maybe Sarah Louise wanted to leave the city for a while, and I began rapidly calculating whether this would make things better or worse between us.
“So I was thinking I would move back into my place,” she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.
“What?”
She took my hand and squeezed it. “I know it must sound crazy, but I think we could both use more space. And, I mean, we’re only twenty minutes apart, so it’s not like we couldn’t still spend time together.”
Twenty minutes apart! The words were at once shocking and… strangely appealing. Perversely appealing. Treacherously appealing.
“What about, um… the whole living-together-before-we-get-married thing?”
“Well it’s not like we can have a wedding anytime soon.” She laughed weakly, and my hands began to shake.
“Sorry if I’m reading into this too much,” I said. “But… Do you want to break up?”
She was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know, Seth. Things have been off for a while. I know you’ve felt it too.”
My instinct was to preserve her feelings by lying, to insist things areamazingand we aremadly in love. But that wouldn’t have been fair.
We’ve been overdue for a difficult conversation.
It was brave of her to start it. I’m not sure I ever would have.
“I know,” I admitted quietly. “I’m not sure if it’s the pandemic, or if it’s us.”
“I do love you,” she said, her voice closer to her normal register. “But we might have rushed into all this too quickly. It’s only been ten months since we met.”
She’s right. I was so excited to have the bachelor phase of my life be over. I was so eager to settle down.
I still want all of that. A marriage, a family. But I can’t shake the feeling that this relationship is wrong.
That she’s not my soul mate.
“I get it,” I said, squeezing her hand. “It’s been fast, and the circumstances took a turn. It’s been really hard on us both.”
“In a way the pandemic might be a blessing,” she said. “If it weren’t for Covid, we’d have rushed into planning a wedding, and gotten swept up in the excitement, and maybe wouldn’t have had time to really be together.”
It hurts me that being together is what made her feelings for me cool. Even if it’s mutual, it’s heartbreaking.
“Let’s take some time,” I said. “You’ll go back to your place, we’ll get some space. See what happens.”
She was quiet for a while, gathering her thoughts. “Will that just drag out a breakup?”
